Now, this is cool, no matter who you are.  A self-propelled Victorian house.  This is an HDRI photo of the Neverwas Haul.  And it’s not just pretty, it’s actually functional.  It even sports a pseudo-periscope called a “Camera Obscura”.  I only wish that there were more photos of the interior; as well as a generous amount of scantily-clad Victorian prostitutes and Whiskey.

Neverwas Haul, a self-propelled 3-story Victorian House, made from 75% recycled equipment and materials, returns with new interiors, operating system, and collections from its travels around the world (i.e., oddities of the Jules Verne era including a Camera Obscura, described below). The Haul measures 24 feet long by 24 feet high and 12 feet wide and is built on the base of a 5 th wheel travel trailer.

A cooperative effort of a number of artists, photographers and lens makers, the Camera Obscura is installed in the turret of the Haul. With the support of a trained technician, the public sees many a spectacular view. A camera obscura is a series of lenses creating an image that is projected onto a concave screen table (sketch included below) [not on this site]. The size of the unit is approximately 12 feet tall by 3 feet wide and is made from hand-made glass lenses, recycled brass fittings and antique ironwork.

Check out the Site for full details: neverwashaul.com

I ran across this recently, but I can’t tell if it’s real. It looks like a really good 3D rendering. Plus, the surface mount components on the PCB kind of ruin the valve tech feel.  Now, take this case and make it a “ship in a bottle”, that would be awesome.  Anyways, it’s interesting but not as cool as the Nixie Clock with GPS Accuracy that I recently posted.

BTW, I encourage you to subscribe to the RSS feed so that you can know when there are new posts.  If you don’t know how to use RSS feeds, figure it out; it’s the only way to keep up with your favorite blogs.  Sorry I’ve been out for a while. I had to move from California back to Arizona. California can fall off into the ocean, and I hope it does and takes Florida with it.

Cake and grief counseling will be available at the conclusion of the test.  WANT!  My new hero at wonderlandblog.com (never heard of him before) made a “Companion Cube” cupboard.  The Companion Cube is a surprisingly overly popular prop from the game Portal.  Portal is one of the games from The Orange Box and is separately available from the Xbox Live Arcade.  If you have a 360, get the Portal demo on XBLA, it’s a very fun game…

Anyways, the carpenter here has thoroughly documented how to create one for yourself.  Get info on The Orange Box too.  Portal is one of the funnest games I’ve ever played…

Oh, man.  Super nice models of the Nautilus (Disney version) from the Nautilus Drydocks (go there for more pictures).  I’m looking at the 66-inch model, and there’s exceptional attention to detail.  You could almost shoot with this as the hero model.  Even the wheelhouse is fully detailed.

They even have additional options to convert it to a Radio Controlled sub that can go into the water.  But you’ll never catch me putting such a toy into the drink.  Knowing my luck, somebody with a model HMS Warrior would come along and sink my sub.

There’s a lot of buzz on the popular, tech blogs about the new T-2 amplifier from Neuhaus Labs.  It’s built on vacuum tubes and hand-wound transformers.  I’ve got about 14 years [at the time of writing this post] in the Pro Audio and Video manufacturing industries, so naturally, I was very curious to look at the T-2.  Short answer:  It’s a WIN!  Here’s my opinion.

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America’s entire science-fiction history is full of stories warning of a dystopian future where books are outlawed, art is destroyed, and the punishment for reading poetry is death.  Who thought that having “electronics books” was a good idea?  Not me, and here’s the proof:

Talk about irony. In an Orwellian moment, owners of Amazon’s Kindle discovered that their recently purchased copies of George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm had been deleted by Amazon. Apparently, a third-party retailer who specializes in selling public-domain books used Amazon’s self-service platform to sell copies of two Orwell titles. Unfortunately, those books aren’t public domain in the U.S.A.

So, with a kindle, “they” can reach out and remove books from your possession.  Sounds a little like depriving you of your property without due process.  Here it comes.  It’s starting to happen for real.  This is the warning sign.  We’re already suckers for DRM crap and DCMA garbage; we can’t copy, move, lend, or basically use anything we pay for and own.

But there’s a flip side.  It turns out that, as usual, we are our own worst enemies.  Society has bred a kind of soccer mom criminal.  It’s become socially acceptable to simply go to a Torrent website and illegally download copyrighted material whenever it suits us.  Music, movies, books, games, and software.  Shoot, if young women could illegally download pregnancy, I’m sure they would.

So, the bad news is that we will end up creating the Firemen or Grammaton Clerics ourselves.  It won’t be government, but private corporations.  Think about it, who wants to get rid of your rights the most?  Is it your job, or the government?  The Government that we always seem to fear is by the people and for the people; the Government is ourselves (at least for now).  But what is the government becoming?  It’s becoming privatized.  We already know that huge corporations buy our politicians.  Since Corporations are running America, maybe we should be concerned about them being “big brother.”  Perhaps they already are:

At Work, here’s what happens:

1. Someone accuses you of doing something wrong to your boss.
2. Your boss didn’t like you anyway, and the accuser is kind of cute.
3. The boss concludes whether or not you are guilty.
4. You are not informed about the specifics of the charge.
5. You are not allowed to know who accused you.
6. You are not allowed to cross examine witnesses.
7. You are not allowed to examine evidence.
8. You have no representation.
9. You are terminated by a pink slip; it’s the first you’ve heard of it.
10. You realize you should have joined a union.

Man, at least with the government, you get some kind of fair shot.

Anyways, these dystopian book-burning warnings come in all shapes and sizes.  Pay attention to them!  Some of my favorites are Equilibrium, Idiocracy, 1984, Fahrenheit 451, Gattaca, V for Vendetta, I Robot, The Matrix, Metropolis, and Animal Farm.

Source: SHIFT

Escapement, by Jay Lake.  3 Omegas out of 5.  A novel set in a SteamPunk universe where the world is hollow and filled with gears, and a giant Wall dividing the world is guarded by mechanical Brass Men.  This is the sequel to Mainspring (maybe, it’s hard to tell if it’s actually a sequel).  The story follows a young girl from a tiny fishing village who wants to see more of the world, and as fate would have it, is compelled to do just that.  Soon into her journey, she learns of the great mechanical prowess of the British and sets out for England.  However, her skills in constructing the rare Gleam attract the attention of evil-doers, and her magnificent adventure ensues.

The book is a little slow to start, but by the end of the first chapter, I was into it.  The quality of the writing is slightly above average, and probably worth reading for the SteamPunk enthusiast.  However, compared to other respected works, such as those by Arthur C. Clarke, James Rollins, C.S. Lewis, or Anne Rice, it’s just not as good.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good story, and I wanted the story to continue; but for the non-SteamPunk’r, this book is a solid “maybe”.  It made me want to read Mainspring.  In defense of Jay Lake, this is my first SteamPunk book; I’ve read thousands of books, and somehow missed this genre until Dr. Warthan handed it to me.

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It’s a SteamPunk, SteamPump, StinkPunk, some kind of comic or graphic novel…  Anyways, this guy’s trying his hand at making himself a SteamPunk style comic.  The website [is GONE] shows several panels, but the comic itself seems incomplete; it looks like an active work-in-progress.

However, I did enjoy watching the video below the panels that showed a time-lapse sequence of the creation process; quite amusing, especially when the artist changes his mind.  You can see a strong Anime influence as well, but what are we trying to say with “stinkpump”?  Somebody let me know when it’s done so I can do a proper WIN/FAIL review.  Good luck finding my e-mail address…

Greetings Professor…

This is cool no matter who you are.  Nice chess set with vacuum tubes that apparently light up when they are placed into the sockets on the board.  Very nice.  However, after a close look at the photos, it appears that LEDs are doing the actual illumination.  Well, I guess 20kV of filament voltage would burn the fingers.

This wonderful vacuum tube chess set, by maker Paul Fryer, actually has electricity running inside the board so that the tubes can draw power and glow as you move them from square to square. It is called, somewhat appropriately, Chess Set for Tesla, and Paul actually made seven sets last year.

From: WIRED

This is just plain cool no matter who you are.  I love Nixie tubes.

There’s no shortage of retro clocks using those gorgeous nixie tubes, but this one’s different. It mixes the 60s-era Eastern European IN-14 time-telling tubes with a serial GPS receiver that keeps its accuracy rock-solid. In addition to that modern wizardry, it also incorporates clever tube-saving features, such as programmable on-and-off times, along with a routine that displays a scrolling date across the tubes to prevent burn-in.

From dvice.com